State Department takes wait-and-see approach on new Twitter policy

"Smart companies need to develop broad principles that guide their action, and in the tech field, this includes principles on freedom of expression, privacy, criteria on when to avoid working with governments that use technology to become more efficient at committing human rights violations - these kinds of things. I think in the Twitter case, what we see here is a company making very clear what its policies are going to be in these circumstances, where the choices are: operate not at all; or operate in a constrained way. So, from that perspective, being honest about what you're up to is in keeping with these standards, but until we see how they're implemented, and how it impacts on content, we obviously can't evaluate whether this is a good thing or not for Internet freedom," Nuland told reporters at a briefing Friday.

"At least this way, Twitter users can know what is up. But, again, until we see how this is implemented, I don't think we're in a position to evaluate," Nuland added.

Twitter announced Thursday that it would begin restricting Tweets in certain countries, marking a policy shift for the social media platform that helped propel the popular uprisings recently sweeping across the Middle East.

Twitter's decision to begin censoring content represents a significant departure from its policy just one year ago, when anti-government protesters in Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab countries coordinated mass demonstrations through on the social network and, in the process, thrust Twitter's disruptive potential into the global spotlight.

As the revolutions brewed last January, Twitter signaled that it would take a hands-off approach to censoring content in a blog post entitled "The Tweets Must Flow."

In the interest of transparency, Twitter said Thursday, it has built a mechanism to inform users in the event that a Tweet is being blocked.